The sound of leaves shaking high in the trees and water drops raining off them took me back to about 1965. I was a skinny kid in ill-fitting clothes sitting in the murky half light of dawn watching for a squirrel out to get his breakfast. It was early season, mid-October, and the hickory trees (we said “hikry”) in front of me still had lots of leaves. This made the squirrels hard to see until later when the leaves fell, but I knew to be patient and wait for a clear shot. Now, sitting in the pre-dawn half darkness of the early season, all of the sights and smells and sounds of the squirrel woods came flooding back to me along with a lot memories.
Younger hunters today may find it hard to believe that once upon a time the opening of the squirrel season was a big deal inthese parts. I mean like Christmas and summer vacation big deal. Friends and families went to camps for squirrel season like many do for deer hunting now. Wide eyed kids and maybe some adults found it impossible to sleep the night before opening day of season. Wearing new boots and an old huntin’ coat we jumped in Dad’s or Granddad’s old truck and away we went. We were excited, the world was bright and shiny new, it was the first day of squirrel season.
Hunters of all ages actually went out before the season and scouted for good places to squirrel hunt. (Some would open the season early, but that is another story) They wanted to know where the food was for squirrels, in the form of what the trees were producing. The acorns and other food for the wildlife is known as “mast” to the hunters. There would be endless discussions as to what the mast conditions would be. “Is there a lot of white oak?” “Did the mast hit up high or is it everywhere?” “Have they cut all the hickory yet?”
When it comes to finding where squirrels where feeding all forms of mast take a back seat to hickory. At least two different forms of the hickory tree occur in our eastern woods. The smaller “pig nut” and the larger shell bark hickory produce the food squirrels will dine on first. Hickory nuts ripen early andsquirrels will start on them before season starts, hence they can be “cut out” of the hickory very quickly. Sitting in the still of an early morning listening to a couple squirrels cutting on hickory with the accompanying rain of shell particles (known as “cuttings”) is one of the chief delights of the early season squirrel hunter.
Again, some of todays hunters may marvel at the extreme popularity of squirrel hunting back in the day. Probably the biggest factor was the scarcity of deer back then. The whitetail deer populations had yet to exploded in many parts of the country, and the avid hunters (we had a lot back then) were going to hunt something and squirrels filled the bill. Actually it was all small game, rabbits were popular game as well and were usually hunted later in the winter time.
On this morning I can’t help but wonder as I sit and listen to the world wake up in the deep woods. Am I really here just to squirrel hunt or am I trying to relive some of the wonder and fascination that skinny kid lived for in what seems like another life. The woods are much the same, the squirrels are the same, the old Remington .22 rifle is the same. Just like my Dad left it. One thing that is abundantly clear is I am not the same. We can’t do anything about that, that is life, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. The kid that once sat here and stared at the treetops with every fiber of his being tuned in to find a squirrel would not have worried about such things.
I miss that kid, I miss squirrel hunting, and I miss how things were simple then.
